“Amaka, please answer it,” Aunty Ifeoma said, even though she was closest to the door.
“I can bet it’s for you, Mom,” Amaka said, focused on her cards. “It’s one of those people who want you to dash them our plates and our pots and even the underwear we have on.”
Aunty Ifeoma got up laughing and hurried to the phone. The TV was off and we were all silently absorbed in our cards, so I heard Aunty Ifeoma’s scream clearly. A short, strangled scream. For a short moment, I prayed that the American embassy had revoked the visa, before I rebuked myself and asked God to disregard my prayers. We all rushed to the room.
“Hei, Chi m o! nwunye m! Hei!” Aunty Ifeoma was standing by the table, her free hand placed on her head in the way that people do when they are in shock. What had happened to Mama? She was holding the phone out; I knew she wanted to give it to Jaja, but I was closer and I grasped it. My hand shook so much the earpiece slid away from my ear to my temple.
Mama’s low voice floated across the phone line and quickly quelled my shaking hand. “Kambili, it’s your father. They called me from the factory, they found him lying dead on his desk.”
I pressed the phone tighter to my ear. “Eh?”
“It’s your father. They called me from the factory, they found him lying dead on his desk.” Mama sounded like a recording. I imagined her saying the same thing to Jaja, in the same exact tone. My ears filled with liquid. Although I had heard her right, heard her say he was found dead on his office desk, I asked, “Did he get a letter bomb? Was it a letter bomb?”
Jaja grabbed the phone. Aunty Ifeoma led me to the bed. I sat down and stared at the bag of rice that leaned against the bedroom wall, and I knew that I would always remember that bag of rice, the brown interweaving of jute, the words ADADA LONG GRAIN on it, the way it slumped against the wall, near the table. I had never considered the possibility that Papa would die, that Papa could die. He was different from Ade Coker, from all the other people they had killed. He had seemed immortal.
I sat with Jaja in our living room, staring at the space where the étagère had been, where the ballet-dancing figurines had been. Mama was upstairs, packing Papa’s things. I had gone up to help and saw her kneeling on the plush rug, holding his red pajamas pressed to her face. She did not look up when I came in; she said, “Go, nne, go and stay with Jaja,” the silk muffling her voice.
Outside, the rain came down in slants, hitting the closed windows with a furious rhythm. It would hurl down cashews and mangoes from the trees and they would start to rot in the humid earth, giving out that sweet-and-sour scent.
The compound gates were locked. Mama had told Adamu not to open the gates to all the people who wanted to throng in for mgbalu, to commiserate with us. Even members of our umunna who had come from Abba were turned away. Adamu said it was unheard of, to turn sympathizers away. But Mama told him we wished to mourn privately, that they could go to offer Masses for the repose of Papa’s soul. I had never heard Mama talk to Adamu that way; I had never even heard Mama talk to Adamu at all.
“Madam said you should drink some Bournvita,” Sisi said, coming into the living room. She was carrying a tray that held the same cups Papa had always used to drink his tea. I could smell the thyme and curry that clung to her. Even after she had a bath, she still smelled like that. It was only Sisi who had cried in the household, loud sobs that had quickly quieted in the face of our bewildered silence.
I turned to Jaja after she left and tried speaking with my eyes. But Jaja’s eyes were blank, like a window with its shutter drawn across.
“Won’t you drink some Bournvita?” I asked, finally.
He shook his head. “Not with those cups.” He shifted on his seat and added, “I should have taken care of Mama. Look how Obiora balances Aunty Ifeoma’s family on his head, and I am older than he is. I should have taken care of Mama.”
“God knows best,” I said. “God works in mysterious ways.” And I thought how Papa would be proud that I had said that, how he would approve of my saying that.
Jaja laughed. It sounded like a series of snorts strung together. “Of course God does. Look what He did to his faithful servant Job, even to His own son. But have you ever wondered why? Why did He have to murder his own son so we would be saved? Why didn’t He just go ahead and save us?”
I took off my slippers. The cold marble floor drew the heat from my feet. I wanted to tell Jaja that my eyes tingled with unshed tears, that I still listened for, wanted to hear, Papa’s footsteps on the stairs. That there were painfully scattered bits inside me that I could never put back because the places they fit into were gone. Instead, I said, “St. Agnes will be full for Papa’s funeral Mass.”
Jaja did not respond.
The phone started to ring. It rang for a long time; the caller must have dialed a few times before Mama finally answered it. She came into the living room a short while later. The wrapper casually tied across her chest hung low, exposing the birthmark, a little black bulb, above her left breast.
“They did an autopsy,” she said. “They have found the poison in your father’s body.” She sounded as though the poison in Papa’s body was something we all had known about, something we had put in there to be found, the way it was done in the books I read where white people hid Easter eggs for their children to find.
“Poison?” I said.
Mama tightened her wrapper, then went to the windows; she pushed the drapes aside, checking that the louvers were shut to keep the rain from splashing into the house. Her movements were calm and slow. When she spoke, her voice was just as calm and slow. “I started putting the poison in his tea before I came to Nsukka. Sisi got it for me; her uncle is a powerful witch doctor.”
For a long, silent moment I could think of nothing. My mind was blank, I was blank. Then I thought of taking sips of Papa’s tea, love sips, the scalding liquid that burned his love onto my tongue. “Why did you put it in his tea?” I asked Mama, rising. My voice was loud. I was almost screaming. “Why in his tea?”
But Mama did not answer. Not even when I stood up and shook her until Jaja yanked me away. Not even when Jaja wrapped his arms around me and turned to include her but she moved away.
THE POLICEMEN CAME a few hours later. They said they wanted to ask some questions. Somebody at St. Agnes Hospital had contacted them, and they had a copy of the autopsy report with them. Jaja did not wait for their questions; he told them he had used rat poison, that he put it in Papa’s tea. They allowed him to change his shirt before they took him away.
A DIFFERENT SILENCE
The Present
The roads to the prison are familiar. I know the houses and shops, I know the faces of the women who sell oranges and bananas just before you turn into the pothole-filled road that leads to the prison yard.
“You want to buy oranges, Kambili?” Celestine asks, slowing the car to a crawl, as the hawkers start to wave and call out to us. His voice is gentle; Mama says it is the reason she hired him after she asked Kevin to leave. That and also that he does not have a dagger-shape scar on his neck.